ZFuel

[CG240Z]

Great updates! Exciting news. Can't wait, maybe you can make some money off this and consider moving somewhere a little bit warmer. Haha.

[rcb280z]

Lenny, that is such excellent news! I was getting frustrated today with my 77 and am about to give up on her and sell her! I am so disappointed with it right now. It fluctuates between lean and rich too much and has been like this for almost 2 years. I wouldn't care so much but here in CA it has become a PITA regarding emissions requirements. So you just reminded me that there is hope after all, thanks!

Edited March 3, 2014 by rcb280z

[FastWoman]

Outstanding! My Z and I are getting very excited!

[EuroDat]

Lenny,

Great news. I just keep dreaming of the possibilities with the Hellfire. Something I have always envied about the guys with modern ECU systems and their chip tuning bla bla. Sucks only having a thermotime resistor to play with.

Chas

[Pharaohabq]

SuperLen,

Great! I'm so glad you're seeing so much progress with this. It's quite exciting and wonderful news that you've got your car actually running on it w/o letting the smoke out through the board. I have a few questions/suggestions that might make it a little easier to work with and to provide the widest audience for your product.

First off, let me say it's wonderful you're targeting the Stock harness. That's an accomplishment in itself. Getting the system to run solely with using the Hellfire brain is great! That's one of the big drawbacks to using MS, is that it requires so much wiring and that alone makes it a pain to deal with because even if one user wires it up and gets it to work then the next person to look at it is going to wonder wtf! what wires are these? Of course that doesn't work in California CARB emissions.

I also love that you've made the pins mappable, that actually is REALLY good in that it leads to my first suggestion. You've made the Hellfire so that it will connect to the Stock ECU plug. What if you used the OEM AFM plug and created a pigtail that you could connect to a MAP Sensor, and Maybe the IAC, or a MAF/IAT combo. I don't know how many of the lines could be repurposed. Certainly you could repurpose the thermotime and or the Cold start injector lines. I'm certain there are a few possibilities with that. Pig tails could be clearly marked and set to work with specific off the shelf parts. (I'd suggest the Nissan MAF's pn:226807S000, They used the same for most 04+ veh) Repurposing lines can allow you to put the MAP close to the manifold where it belongs. Finding lines just as the thermotime line, could allow you to run a knock sensor too. Yes this involves finding more connectors BUT it could allow the stock system to stay intact and make these engines work awesome for "dummies" I'd love to see MAP/TPS/IAC/CPS and CHT all on the stock harness if we could find wires to repurpose.

For AFM mode: I like that you have the accelometer and Baro on the board. That Baro can like you said be used to calibrate the MAP, but it could also give you starting points for your startup/ AFM calibration. If you start basing on BARO just as MAP would, then you basically ignore the CSInjector, and have your baseline for the AFM. You could have a learn period, where once started it would monitor the AFM and pull data, averaging points based on the highest reading vs lowest (BARO) and these points in between would match to your A/F table. So the higher your AFM read the more points, but it's interpreted, so you won't have to worry about dead spots on the AFM potentiometer. I was thinking it would read say last 3 points averaged should be pretty solid even with a uncalibrated, un adjusted AFM. If you stepped on it, you'd establish the high end. So yes, initially it would start and rev high will you pressed the gas and established a high point. Maybe you'd want some safeguard to prevent over rev.

As for Synchronous vs batch firing: I was thinking about this and you may be able to have it learn where Cyl 1 injector 1 is w/o a timing wheel. I mean you have the spark timings and you know when Cyl one fires based on that, but you don't know which stroke. So what of the idea of having it start in Batch injector fire mode. Then with your wide-band O2, you monitor closely and turn off injector 1 every few cycles and see if you can tell when it's lean. From there You may be able to tell at what point to start a sequential injection pattern. I realize this probably has a lot of flaws. I am familiar with timing wheels, so yes Batch is MUCH easier. Without a timing wheel, the Sequential may end up delayed since your only input to engine speed or position would be the Distrib. Some later Distrib have additional sensors available. I'm not sure how feasible this is since I don't know how accurate or fast the wide-band O2 sensors are.

Another thing you may consider including is a VSS, It's not in the stock harness, but a Vehicle Speed Sensor may help you tweak for efficiency. I know you're not thinking so much about MPG right now, you're much more thinking "gotta make it run" but later it may help your performance. I'm not sure if there's any other ECU wires that could be repurposed for that.

You may also check to see if the 280ZX used the same ECU plug and pins... There's plenty of S130's out there with ECU troubles. It would be awesome to have a Hellfire ZX mode along with L28ET mode. I know... Future...

Next question: Have you looked at MS Configuration maps? I wonder how hard it would be for you to write an interpreter so that you could "borrow" the MS profiles that were already created for the L28? This might save some tuning later on.

One big reason to put a manual factory reset button on the hellfire. is if you're setup and driving along and you start having issues. Most of us don't carry a laptop along in the car, but it should would be nice if we could hit the button and have it fall into our predesignated safemode, or you hold the button down for say 30 seconds and it drops into Full factory Reset.

Phar

[superlen]

Thanks for all the remarks, everyone.

Phar.. pretty much everything you said is in the works. Here's a few quick notes & I'll respond later with more details, and feel free to ask more questions.

The AFM plug as three wires for three analog channels available. IAT, the AFM signal itself, and the AFM ref signal. The old ECU need the reference as the AFM was fed with unregulated +12. I feed it a regulated voltage so the REF signal is now available to use for anything the user wants in the engine bay. My instinct is that wideband o2 is the most useful. External MAP would be another choice as the external sensor mounted in the intake is better than a vaccum line to the onboard. In that case, the onboard MAP turns into constant BARO measurement. If you run a MAF instead of the AFM, it will just run on the AFM Wiper signal.

(For testing, I"m going to have a MAF and AFM in series - MAF on the now available AFM ref singal. BTW, Having the pins mappable via the GUI is way freakin' handy for me testing.)

I'll check out the MAF number you noted. I bought one from ebay that's off an Infinity that is easily obtainable and inexpensive. It's rated for a lot more flow so I need to verify my sensitivity at stock Z air flow is not down in the weeds. I have up to 16bits of a/d resolution so we should be fine.

The thermotime switch and CSV are completely external to the ECU so those wires don't help much. The AAR actually has a wire that runs back to the ECU but it's to a pin that's missing on the stock connectors.

I will also be offering turn key new replacement harnesses, stock of course, plus pre-configured wiring solutions for a MAF setup, ignition, ect. The pre-configured will also be part of a Stage Kit where you get the ECU, Harness, sensors, ect. I don't have any details mapped out, but that's the plan.

I have some ideas/schemes for Auto AFM calibration that are similar to what you mentioned. To start with, I'm just tweaking numbers by hand. I also will implement a histogram of AFM readings which over X number of cycles will pinpoint any dead spots. Then I'll just "fix" those for the user & try to heal an AFM that otherwise works great, but has only one tiny spot.

I've thought a bit about a smart/creative way to determine the sequential pattern. I have some ideas, but truthfully it's low down on the list. Sequential has an advantage for better idling, but the amount of time I'll need to put in to try to auto-detect the sequential I just don't have right now. If someone wants sequential, they will need the Hybrid version and run with a trigger wheel (either in the disty or on the crank).

I do have inputs for vehicle speed. If the user adds a sensor that has digital ouput, HellFire Classic is fine & they can use one of the four spare inputs. If you have a reluctor type input, they will need the Hybrid.

The Zx has the same connector, but different pinout. I'll offer one for that engine immediately after the s30s are taken care of. The software will be almost identical. The only difference is the board dimension and the pinout. Note: The same goes for most any L-Jet equipped vehicle. They all need to be retrofitted to HellFire Equipped!

As for MS. I have no experience with that system at all & I have tried to refrain from learning much about it so that my design stays fresh. I want HellFire to be a great system for what I believe the end user wants, and what the users (primarily from this forum) have indicated they want. It's hard to do any research of course without running into MS info, and the two system will share a lot of common features (as well as any other standalone EMS for that matter) just because they are both engine management systems. For all the math involved and massive software/firmware labor, basic engine control boils down to measure airflow - calculate fuel - spray fuel.

As for interpreting their stuff, it's easier for me to just work from scratch. Then it will be right...or wrong.....then right.

One of the auxillary inputs can be used for a master reset if someone really wanted this, but I'm not designing a system that needs to be rebooted...EVER! At least, that's the goal. An EMS that needs that feature is someone scary. I realize that in the MS world with homebrew builds, 2 layer non shielded pcbs, board hacks, and DIY changes & DB25 connectors, ect. ect. that a FailSafe option is much more needed & warranted. With HellFire being more of just a production plug and play, the need for that failsafe should be much less. Still, I concede you have a valid point and I can easily add a selection in the drop down to do a failsafe boot via one of the external inputs. I do know I'll need it during testing. Actually, it's kind of already implmented. You can select between multiple tunes stored, such as tune1, tune2, ect. The gui can select of course, but I had considered an external toggle to switch between the two. I was thinking one for performance, one for emissions, one for the teenage son borrow the car for prom.

Ok, enough for now. Thanks so much for your feedback. That is what I need to make the system as good as it can be.

Len

[superlen]

SuperLen,

I'd love to see MAP/TPS/IAC/CPS and CHT all on the stock harness if we could find wires to repurpose.

This is doable with the stock harness with some caveats. They would be connected like this:

• MAP -> stock AFM Wiper wire.
  
• TPS -> stock TPS, (I can read stock switch or analog TPS with ZERO changes to wire or plug - How cool is that!)
  
• CHT -> stock CHT
  
• IAC (Idle Air Control) have to find an IAC to plumb in yourself, but the wire going to the AAR comes from the ecu in the stock harness so we can use it to control it. I thought ahead and already have the PWM output available to this wire. On the stock ECU this wire is grounded & serves as the power GND for the AAR. My assumption is that Bosch thought at some point in the future they may try to control this as well.
  

CPS (crank position sensor). This one using the stock harness is not straightforward, but not impossible. We need a wire and we need a connection to the CPS input circuit. The wire could be the AFM REF wire since it is already very close to the front of the engine, but this wire only runs to the analog inputs inside HellFire, it normally does not connect to the CPS input circuit. The user would have to jumper it over either outside in the harness near the case(easier for most) or internal to HellFire (more difficult, but cleaner looking install). When I re-spin the board and release the Hybrid I will add some jumpers internal to make this easier.

Len

[FastWoman]

Lenny: "one for the teenage son borrow the car for prom."

Rev limited to about 3500 RPM, right?

I'm wondering how difficult it would be to modify the distributor to serve as a cam angle sensor. It would take a bit of cobbling, but I'm thinking something like this:

1. Disable all advance mechanisms, probably by immobilizing the breaker plate.

2. Machine a new distributor cap without the plug wire connects. I think Chas (EuroDat) could either give you some great advice regarding plastic molding, or he might make the parts for you. (He made a very nice inspection light dome for me.)

3. Build into this cap a "rotor sensor." It would be an LED/photodiode pair between which the "blade" electrode of a stock rotor would pass. This sensor would identify the #1 position, and the reluctor output would give you your timing information.

4. Program a "set timing" mode into your firmware that would fix the advance to 10 deg BTDC, relative to the reluctor signal. Using this mode, the distributor could be turned as needed to achieve an actual 10 deg BTDC.

5. Ignition advance is then set by the Hellfire, and ignition is achieved through either lost spark or coil-on-plug. With this setup, sequential fuel injection would also be relatively easy.

Note: the cap would have to be installed/removed when the rotor is turned away from the #1 position.

I like Pharaoh's idea of an adapter on the AFM plug to break out connections for the Hellfire. However, my own preferred solution would be to have an accessory connector on the Hellfire that would run to a tiny breakout box under the hood. And in truth, I'd just make my own accessory harness to run from the Hellfire's accessory connector, straight to the under-hood accessory items.

Edited March 4, 2014 by FastWoman

[superlen]

Sarah,

Pretty much yes to all you said. (man, do I get tired of saying that. ). I even have the 3d printer shipping to me next week to model some of the plastic parts and rubber molds I'm going to eventually need. We have other needs for the printer at work so I pulled the trigger on one a few weeks back.

I've wanted to build something like the 123ignition disty but its farther down the road. To start with, I'll do almost exactly what you said. I haven't set any details in place as to how I will do the harness wiring for it, but will offer a plug & play harness of some sort once I get to that point. One thing I was planning was leds in place of where the stock wires would be & then fire them for grins and giggles.

One thing different though was that I would just machine a 36-1 slotted wheel and use a missing tooth arrangement. This gives you better resolution & the missing tooth syncs you to Cylinder 1. That way the VR in the disty can go away. There is still some gear lash/slop in the drive gears for the disty, so it's not quite as good as a true crank trigger wheel, but it's pretty close. Wiring/installation would be easier too of course and the sensor would be self-contained/sealed rather than down at the engine crankshaft pulley in the salt/grime.

I was planning on just locking the disty in one place and all timing would come from the HellFire config, but it's just as simple to twist the disty as it is to change a number for the static timing, maybe even more so.

Good ideas all around, and thanks for the input/feedback.

Len

[Pharaohabq]

Trigger wheels. There's a guy on Hybridz who makes triggerwheels that are set to bolt to the front pulley on the L28's. So no need to recreate unless you want to.

3D printers. I've been using them for a couple years. At home I use the hobby lvl prusa's i2, i3... I've even recreated a lot of Datsun repair parts with them. I don't know which one you'd selected, different printers have different advantages / disadvantages. For prototypes and small batch parts they're completely worth it. Production, I would look to outsource.

I love the Kid-mode idea. Though I'd suggest 3K RPM rather than 3.5K 3.5 in 5th on my z is 75-80Mph.. More useful I think would be just slower revving. That way the kid wants to race, he's going to be beat every time since say it takes 5 seconds to advance to 3500 rpm from 800, it's still driveable, but it'll be painful.

wifi or Bluetooth connectivity would be awesome... I know that's a later idea.

For TPS, I was thinking the more full blown version rather than the 2 switch box. IAC is often on the same Unit. This is much more aimed at the common S13 TB swap. When people switch to MS a lot of times they dump the AFM and bolt on the S13 TB with a cold air intake. If that's an analog signal then that's awesome. If we made a pigtail that uses the "repurposed" wires then you could sell those pigtails too. I wonder if we could run a CPS and a MAP off those AFM wires.

Have you looked as Hesco.com Jeep EFI upgrades? They use 94' jeep parts to upgrade older jeeps to EFI. They sell a lot of the components. But the same are available at Autozone cheaper. My point here is that perhaps you could make a version of the Hellfire that uses a common plug scheme so for generic engine upgrade, you could also sell a harness that could be bought off the shelf.

That infinity MAF is probably the same or very similar to what Nissan used in so many other cars. I've got a list around here somewhere.

That's great you already accounted for VSS. VSS can allow you to lean the fuel a bit for prolonged driving at any rate. There's often sensors you can screw in place between the speedo gear and the speedo cable. I can find you a link if you're interested. I don't know if it'd work with the Z.

Again I've got a Z and parts sitting around too so if you need more beta testers ;-)

[superlen]

Eric,

For prototypes and small batch parts they're completely worth it. Production, I would look to outsource.

We ordered a Makerbot 5th gen just to play with. We do lots of prototype enclosures for the electronics we design. It should work well for our purpose of just testing rough fit of the electronics to opening in the housings, keypad recesses, mounting tabs, ect. We only care about prototypes before hard tooling is made. Last year we spent around $35k having SLA prototypes made. Most of that was on one project, and I wish I had just bought one then. The hard tooling for the production injection mold was of course significantly more than that. Thankfully the hard tooling cost is handled by the customer.

For TPS, I was thinking the more full blown version rather than the 2 switch box.

I handle that no problem. I did something nifty on the stock wires that allows a true analog position TPS as well as Idle/Wot. Instead of running 12V out the center and measuring the WOT/IDLE with digital inputs, I ran 5V and ground out what used to be the Idle/Wot inputs & I read position back in on what used to be the +12v supply. This allows an aftermarket TPS like found on the 240 TB to be hooked up without any changes & I can read 0-100% position. The STOCK Idle/WOT still works as well because my analog signal either reads full scale a/d counts at WOT or in the weeds at IDLE. Due to some series resistors it actually reads 33% at Idle, 75% at off idle, and 100% at full scale.

If we made a pigtail that uses the "repurposed" wires then you could sell those pigtails too. I wonder if we could run a CPS and a MAP off those AFM wires.

The adapters will be available on the store for the standard conversion parts such as the infinity MAF (or others) or the 240TB,ect. . Details to be figured out later. What I assume will happen is that as people start modifying and have needs for adapters, pigtails, or brackets, I'll help design the solution for them & then add it to the store if it looks like others could benefit from it.

The AFM wires can handle the CPS and MAP, but a jumper as mentioned in the other post would have to be worked in. My design goal was to give the HellFire a tremendous amount of adaptability for those who need it without creating a nightmare for those that just need a sweet reliable & tuneable stock replacement.

Len

[EuroDat]

I even have the 3d printer shipping to me next week to model some of the plastic parts and rubber molds I'm going to eventually need. We have other needs for the printer at work so I pulled the trigger on one a few weeks back.

Hi Lenny,

We have a Cubify CubeX at work. The price tag is not for the hobbiest. Filiment is expensive at €150/kg and I think you can find better printers for less money these days. We bought it to make test parts for a high shear centrifuge. Mixed feelings about it though.

They are always getting cheaper. Cubify's software is not so user friendly and it doesn't seem to have the adjustability like MakerBot and others no doubt.

It will be interesting to hear your experiences.

Chas